Who We Are
edge was created to bring a new Urban Design and masterplanning offer to the market; having worked together for many years, Hannah and Sarah have extensive experience across all sectors from housing to education, retail, and commercial masterplanning. The concept behind edge is to bring together Hannah’s passion for visioning and concept design with Sarah’s love for robust detailing and delivery, supported by a team of forward thinking built environment professionals with backgrounds in urban design, landscape architecture and architecture.
From our studio in Thame, Oxfordshire, we offer a bespoke service for projects of all scales from one house to 20,000+ homes. We create special places and instill the importance and added value of good placemaking.
Sarah Murray
Director
Recognised Practitioner
BArch (Hons) MA Urban Design
Read Sarah’s Biography
Sarah is passionate about creating special places. From her extensive travels and scrutiny of places around the world, she is motivated to enhance the quality of placemaking in the UK with fresh and forward-thinking ideas – making ‘different’ great!
One of Sarah’s strengths is turning ideas into reality. She believes in designing high quality, sustainable developments with a strong focus on community engagement to create a legacy for future generations.
Sarah’s architectural background and natural aptitude for resolving problems ensures a design approach that embraces rigour and structure at all stages of the design process. She takes immense pride in her work and her attention to detail is second to none.
Throughout her career to date, Sarah has taken a lead role in the design, coordination, and delivery of numerous residential and mixed-use projects, ranging from 1 to 6,000 units. Notable masterplanning projects in the UK include Chilmington Green, Ashford; South Worcester; Boorley Green, Eastleigh; and St Ives, Cambridgeshire; as well as an award-winning regeneration project in Lenton, Nottingham. Sarah has also been involved in various projects in Sweden and Australia.
Hannah Smart
Director
Recognised Practitioner
BA Dip (Hons) Dip Arch
Read Hannah’s Biography
Winner of the Oxford Property Festival Young Person of the Year for 2018, Hannah is a leader in her field and promotes high-quality development and regeneration through her comprehensive and inspiring design process.
As an “ideas person” and with the desire to think outside of the box, Hannah uses her creative skills to think strategically and bring added value and energy to her work. She believes in creating narrative at every stage and engaging a design process that is interdisciplinary, follows a landscape-led approach and achieves imaginative placemaking.
Hannah recently featured in the BBC 2 documentary “The Newbuilds are Coming”, which followed a housing development through the Planning System; observing the extensive design process and detailed consideration that takes place behind the scenes of the development industry.
During her career, Hannah has been involved in, and led, the design of many projects including Masterplans and Visions for NW Bicester Eco Town, Oak Old Common, Earls Court, Royal Albert Docks, Mount Pleasant and Wood Wharf. She has successfully designed and delivered mixed-use masterplans of between 1 and 20,000 units in the South East, predominantly Oxfordshire.
Hannah is passionate about site finding, urban regeneration and creating vibrant high streets for our towns and cities.
Charlie Jackson
Urban Designer & Chartered Landscape Architect
BSc MLA CMLI Landscape Arch
Read Charlie’s Biography
Charlie is passionate about people. She is motivated by seeing and wanting all to enjoy their normal daily lives wherever they are. She believes engaging Urban Design can improve availability of recuperating and invigorating places.
Influenced by cultures around the globe and human psychology, she aims to create places of belonging, that work in favour for today’s diverse ways of living, encouraging community wherever possible.
Being a Chartered Landscape Architect and Carer for the elderly, Charlie’s approach is holistic. She offers big picture purpose and ecological improvement, with an acute awareness of realistic buildability. She has experience on specialised, mixed-use, and residential projects across the UK. These range in size, purpose, and level of detail, from outline planning to construction detail designing. She has worked alongside clients, consultants, and contractors and enjoys the sharing of expertise through teamwork.
One of Charlie’s strengths is envisioning what places will be like to journey through or experience. She ensures the safeguarding of liveability and enjoyment for all ages and abilities.
Outside of edge Charlie enjoys hosting and being hosted by family and friends, or being outdoors hiking, horse riding or exploring new countries.
Sarah Middleton
Urban Designer
BA (Hons) MA
Read Sarah’s Biography
Sarah is passionate about Urban Design and creating ‘people friendly places’, bringing a multi-disciplinary approach to her work. She has experience of working on mixed-use and residential projects ranging from 5 to 1500 homes, from strategic masterplanning through to reserved matters applications. Sarah has a keen attention to detail and places an emphasis on high design quality.
With an enthusiasm for placemaking, active travel and creating walkable and sustainable neighbourhoods, Sarah is interested in how Urban Design can contribute to the creation of resilient futures and the impact of health and wellbeing in urban areas. She combines her existing knowledge and experience with a curiosity to learn and enjoys resolving design challenges to create high quality places for people.
In addition to her role at edge, Sarah will be studying an MA in Urban Design from autumn 2020. This will broaden her understanding of Urban Design theory, concepts and analysis, supporting her development as a designer and underpinning her wealth of practical experience.
Outside of edge, Sarah loves aerial acrobatics, open water swimming and surfing along the coast. She is also a cycling enthusiast and likes to travel by bike whenever she can.
Astrid Guthier
Assistant Urban Designer
BSc Urban Planning & Development
Read Astrid’s Biography
Astrid has an unprecedented passion for the built environment, with vast enthusiasm, eagerness, and excitement to design people-centric developments which utilise and enhance the natural environment.
Having graduated with a First-Class Honours in BSc Urban Planning and Development, and awarded Top Performing Student in her cohort, Astrid is now nearing completion of her MA in Urban Design at Oxford Brookes. Astrid is driven to broaden her knowledge and first-hand experience in the industry, whilst allowing her to apply newly taught theory and techniques to her work.
Astrid’s willingness to learn and flair to take on new challenges are proving to be the foundation of a highly skilled designer. She believes in the importance of sharing ideas and experiences so that others may also become inspired to stimulate creative change for a sustainable future.
Outside of life at edge, Astrid has a passion for photography and discovering unique forms of architecture and cultures across the world. She has a dream of converting a van into a campervan one day and hitting the open road!
Read a little more about Astrid’s views on Urban Design!
Tereza Kadlecová
Assistant Urban Designer
BA (Hons) Architecture
Read Tereza’s Biography
Tereza completed her degree in Architecture at the University of Cambridge. She is interested in urbanism and the public realm, two areas which have a significant impact on how we experience everything we do. Tereza enjoys the process of thorough site analysis whilst being challenged and gaining inspiration from the individuality of real-life situations.
Tereza has an interest in communal living, urban gardening and ways of regenerating post-communist suburbs. At Cambridge, she received a Distinction for her dissertation “Opening Architecture”, that explored ways in which architectural education could become more ‘open’ towards newcomers and inclusive to other disciplines. She is passionate about working actively with the public and educating younger generations in active community involvement.
Tereza loves travelling, and with a sketchbook in her hand, she has experienced many exciting trips around the globe. In her spare time, Tereza writes a blog where she gathers her thoughts and sketches about public space and everyday life in countries from Nepal to England and Czechia to Greece. If you would like to see more of Tereza’s sketches, click on the link below:
Sophie Evans
Creative Producer
Read Sophie’s Biography
Sophie has spent the past 10 years working on a multitude of creative projects for a variety of brands and industries, including fashion, e-commerce and travel. Specialising in creative project and campaign management, Sophie’s passion is the creative journey in all its forms, from planning, research and analysis through to the final output.
Having worked on everything from photoshoot art direction to brochure production and print management, Sophie’s variety of creative marketing experience focuses on interdisciplinary storytelling – from the visuals to the copy and everything in between.
Outside of life at edge, Sophie enjoys digital illustration and creates her own range of homewares and stationery, two of her greatest loves!
Read a little more about Sophie’s views on creativity!
Greta Leonaviciene
Urban Designer
BA (Hons) MA Urban Design
Read Greta’s Biography
Greta is an enthusiastic Urban Designer who is passionate about creating places that are eye-catching and exciting. With a multicultural background and experience of working in different countries, Greta is inspired to use her knowledge to shape and enhance places through the integration of successful and attractive green infrastructure.
Having graduated with a First-Class Honours in Landscape Architecture and an MA in Urban Design, Greta demonstrates a thorough multi-disciplinary and holistic approach that plays a crucial role in her involvement in residential and mixed-use schemes of all scales from strategic promotions to bespoke masterplanning schemes.
Family comes first for Greta and outside of living life on the edge, she enjoys spending time with her family, her little boy Nojus and her dog Mela.
Read a little more about Greta’s views on Urban Design!